Saturday, September 25, 2010

Russell Brand and Katy Perry Purchase Pied a Terre

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Since Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter are currently on a bit of a holiday in the perfection that is Santa Barbara, CA it's only appropriate that we discuss the recent real estate doings of one of the coastal city's native daughters, Miss Katy Perry.

Miss Perry, for those who don't keep up with the gossip, has the last few days been faced with a shit storm of righteous anger from letter writing prudish parents of toddlers upset with the amount of cleavage she bared in a Sesame Street video duet with Tickle Me Elmo. The powers that be at Sesame Street kowtowed to their choleric constituents and chose not to air the video, which y'all can see hereiffin you care.

First of all, Miss Perry–oh, gurl, pleeze–despite the tough to stomach inanity of your little pop ditties, you are riding a massive wave of popularity at the moment so we really don't know why you'd even do something so silly and desperate seeming as a stoopid duet with a damn Tickle Me Elmo puppet.

Secondly, to paraphrase the sassy and saucy comedienne Chelsea Handler, we are outraged that anyone has a stick so far up their butt that they'd actually bother to be outraged by something so ridiculous. While the yellow outfit might have been a poor choice–it's just plain ass uglee as far as we're concerned–Your Mama can't find anything even remotely vulgar about the video. We just hope these uptight and naïve parents who made the bizarre effort to stomp their feet and whine like ninnies to the people at Sesame Street don't do anything as careless as, say, take their innocent offspring to the beach or the community swimming pool where, by comparison to Miss Perry's bouncing boob-tops, there's a virtual pornographic cornucopia for Sesame Street age children to ogle.

Anyhoo, worse even than the breast brouhaha itself is that the whole thing got our blood got all up. It's just crying over spilt milk that we don't even want to drink, you know? Lo-wered.

Miss Perry, a fashion maverick and sartorial hot mess if there ever was one, is engaged to nappy and stringy looking British jokester Russell Brand who recently sold his louche London townhouse that was on the market with a guide price of £2,500,000. According to Your Mama's trusty currency conversion contraption that's $3,937,200 at today's rates for all us Uhmereecanos.

Mister Brand and Miss Perry have been on quite a real estate spree. In late December of 2009, they shelled out $3,250,000 for a 4,706 square foot house in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles. Now, less than a year later, world slip slides down the celebrity real estate gossip grapevine that the quirky couple just closed escrow on a modestly sized if not exactly inexpensive penthouse apartment in New York City's star studded TriBeCa neighborhood.

According to the reports, the mixed-nationality pair paid $2,700,000 for an approximately 1,500 square foot doo-plex penthouse. The wee aerie sits atop a building that sits just around the corner from Nobu Next Door where a body can eat some pretty damn good sushi iffin they have the dollars to do so. According to The Post, the soon to be newlyweds purchased a place in New York City to help with their taxes.

The renovated and oddly shaped penthouse has a living room with built in cabinets to hide the electronics, gew-gaws and other assorted celebrity paraphernalia, and three large south facing windows with framed by built in bookshelves. The small but well equipped kitchen is open to the decent sized dining room where the ceiling of exposed beams take part in an architectural stand off with the sleek stainless steel cabinetry in the kitchen.

A small bedroom in the back of the apartment has loads of closets and a skylight but, regrettably, not a proper window. Can it even be called a bedroom if there's not an actual window? Aren't there laws about these things? A laundry closet with stacked machines and a large pooper slathered in limestone complete the lower level. However, and unfortunately the door to the pooper opens directly in the kitchen and dining room, which is a real no-no and should be avoided if at all possible for a myriad of obvious olfactory reasons.

A custom built cherry stair case winds up to the second level loft bedroom–the so-called "master bedroom" on the floor plan included with marketing materials–where there are plenty of windows and a small private pooper with a space saving concave wall. There are not, however, any closets. Not. A. Single. Damn. Closet. In. The. Master. Bedroom. Clearly this awkwardly laid out penthouse is what one might call a couple's apartment meant to be utilized as a one bedroom apartment with a large dressing room.

At best, the layout is inconvenient and while those who don't like, live in or want to live in New York City will surely take serious umbrage with the layout, the truth is New Yorkers tend to be a more forgiving of unwieldy floor plans in exchange for luxuries like a manageably sized south facing terrace that offers a make-your-friends-jealous view of the delicious wedding cake-like Woolworth Building like this one does.

Given that Miss Perry and Mister Brand own a much more significantly sized home in Los Angeles, we expect they'll dig deeper roots on the west coast and use their new penthouse pad in New York as a kind of pied a terre. Awkward as the layout may be and although we might chosen something else, we should all be so damn lucky as to be in the financial position at 26 damn years old to buy a 2-point-7 million clam pied a terre in New York damn City. So la-de-dah. We don't listen to or care for your particular brand of pop music Miss Perry, but you go on witch yer bad real estate self now, hear?

11 comments:

Babe Parish
said...

Mama, now why didn't some Sesame intern or make up person whisper into Miss Katy's little ear that her outfit was a lil too va-voom for the Kermit Krowd? She wasn't really showing anything more than say, Miss Piggy does in her white cream satin bustier! Kudos to Perry and Brand on their real estate ventures. JUST DON'T MAKE A FILM TOGETHER! xoxox

I would hope not to hear that they'll never set foot in this little tax haven (when there are homeless architects such as myself running around the country) but that's probably the gig. I never imagined that visits to the real estalker could possibly ruin a Sunday morning.

Ah, leave it to our Mama to drag us up out of the muck by using the word louche; I could cry with pride.

Regarding the Sesame Street debacle, as our ol' friend Will would say, "Much ado about nothing..."

Despite my paltry knowledge of womens' fashions, I do know a peplum from a pencil skirt; I believe the dress Ms. Perry is wearing in the video (ass uglee though it be) has a sweetheart neckline ––– popular with wedding dresses, it's always been my understanding that a certain amount of "innocence" attaches to the name of the style.

Though the apartment is quirky & oddly laid out, as a pied-a-terre it's a successful oddity; a few minor changes (if structurally possible) could alleviate some of the inconveniences of what is essentially a one bedroom apartment (correct me if I'm wrong, but in NYC doesn't a room have to have an outside window to be technically considered a bedroom?)

Iffin I were the NYC type, and if I just happened to round up a couple million in couch change while wool gathering about how delightful SB must me right about now in this unseemly SoCal heatwave, I could picture myself being quite happily ensconced in this pied. Seriously, 105 degrees at the end of September?! It's all one can do to keep the meat and two veg from becoming the virtual bouquet of a Calcutta outhouse during monsoon season. You don't want to know the auxiliary service that icebox gin bottle has been indentured to.

To Lil' Gay Boy, whose posts I enjoy reading ALMOST as much as Mama's,: I note that the second bedroom has a skylight. I was once in an apartment where the third bedroom also only had a skylight. It makes for a very odd feeling when the only window is up. Perhaps that loophole lets it qualify as a bedroom.Your fashion knowledge is indeed spot on!

In my less than humble experience you cannot even call it a legal bedroom ifn it don't have a flippin' window! And opening the damn pooper door onto the dining room - can you say "no acoustic privacy?" The Master Bath, too, is a little underwhelming. For my money, Miss Katy will regret this